Cholena Orr

Happiness Before Productivity

Cholena Orr is a productivity expert whose posts I’ve been reading over the last year. Some of the topics include leadership, productive and happy workplace cultures as well as mindfulness in business. As the Director of Pac Executive Human Capital, Cholena leads a team of coaches and Human Capital specialists who consult to an impressive list of leading executives and corporate companies globally. Cholena is a business builder who, over the last twenty years, has worked at organisations building their internal talent acquisition teams and establishing new teams in new markets and cities for consulting companies. She is a regular contributor to business journals such as the CEO Magazine, Business Woman’s Media, Business Insider and Kochie’s Business Builders and releases her first book “the Mindful Work Week” in the latter half of 2016.

During my conversation with Cholena she shares:

Why it is important to to identify habits in the workplace

Ways to identify staff habits that reduce productivity

The value in understanding (behavioural) triggers

What mindfulness in business is

An example of mindfulness impacting customer experience

Why happiness leads to productivity (and not the other way around)

Ideas for how to create a happy workplace

The home life-workplace culture connection

Stress management – responsive over reactive

Examples of how to increase happiness in our workplace

Why rewarding should be about ‘how’ they do something not financial outcome alone

How to track habit change, happiness improvement and productivity; and

“Very few of us are taught how to work – and actually learn through trial and error. Sometimes the strategies we come up with don’t lead to productivity and happiness. Therefore we end up unhappy at work, become unproductive and it spirals from there” Cholena Orr

“We focus on habits. 40-45% of the decisions we make today are simply due to habit…we need to develop good habits and do it in a sustainable way” Cholena Orr

“High performance = efficiency x effectiveness” Cholena Orr

“Hire happy people. Hire people who already have happy attitudes… they do what they would naturally do anyway” Cholena Orr

“Identify what people’s natural strengths are. Those natural strengths should be the types of strengths that work well within your environment, your culture, with your clients or customers” Cholena Orr

“We encourage people to exercise on their breaks or together. We also create social opportunities which don’t necessarily involve alcohol” Cholena Orr

Would you like this episode on your blog or website?

Our podcast player will look like this on your site:

Get our podcast player onto your site by simply copying and pasting the following code: